Open source is a term associated with free, meaning completely without cost or obligation. Under certain circumstances open software is free in that way. Using open software for a not-for-profit animal shelter or a 'jog for diabetes' website is completely free but those are exceptions rather than the rule. Often when companies are looking for software to run their for-profit company they find open source software and think, ahha! here is a way to bypass the cost of developing our own software or buying a commercial license, we can use this for free. That is a misunderstanding of the open software's purpose and ultimately any time or money that is invested is misguided.
Open source is primarily a solution for companies or corporations which are nonprofit or are educational and are not strictly a commercial venture. Other educational purposes such as teaching programmers how to program, is another main focus of the open software movement.
A commercial project technically might be allowed under a particular open license but, in itself is not an ethically sound use of open source software. An application which was written by people for free on their own time for use by non-profits is not ethically or legally allowed to be used by a for-profit corporation which is just trying to avoid paying for it's own software. Open software can be used for a commercial purpose if the owners agree to putting some money back into the development of the software.
Commercial projects may indeed be allowed according to a particular license and a quick glance over the terms may seem to allow it but open source projects are not appropriate for several different reasons:
Complexity
Open source projects are often developed over many years and have dozens or hundreds or even thousands of developers during the span of development and if a problem arises, often current developers shrug, because knowing why something happens is simply not possible. Without that coherence of developing the application in a development environment using relatively the same methods, working on solutions to problems is challenging to even the most capable of developers.
License
Laws are defined and enforced by geographic region and they may not be interpreted the same in different locations. Laws of one country may not be recognized by other countries.
Ethics
Sometimes ethics seem to be a frivolous topic without strict enforcement in the real world and to do wrong is a personal ethical choice. In this case, the people who are in charge of a project may disagree with your ethics and choose to let you know through technical, financial or legal means.
Disputes
According to copyright law, even though you may own the application and have put in quite a lot of time and money and are doing your own development and customizing what was created by other people; the problem is that you are now open to ownership disputes.
If a commercial project were ever to become very successful, another Facebook or MySpace and a lot of money were involved, there would be ownership disputes. Someone who worked on the project years ago could just allege that they have a stake in the company and the line of claimants may disappear into the horizon.
Even if their allegations are completely frivolous, a for-profit company would not want to open itself up to the possibility of that sort of dispute. That is the main reason why a company would choose to develop their own software from the ground up under contract with the developer rather than using an open source project. The problem of the lack of forethought on a company's part or the misunderstanding of the nature of open source is a challenge being faced both by for-profit companies and the open community as well.
One way to think about it is to compare open source to the way we think about Public Television in America. Public TV and Radio are now no longer Government funded so they have to find money from the audience who appreciate their non-profit projects. Even though their programs were developed for the public, they must still ask the audience for financial support for ongoing development. In order to justify any commercial use of open source software there has got to be financial support which comes back from the use of the product, even under an open source license whereas that is not the case with truly non-profit projects.
Brent Mather Swan is an application developer having worked for companies such as Best Buy and Fannie Mae. He wrote the Application Framework called fusionSushi which is a web content management application. Similar to other social networking applications such as Drupal, Joomla, MySpace and Facebook, fusionSushi has been adapted for internal use as a corporate information system and for use on mobile platforms.
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